On One Year
Jun. 8th, 2024 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scrubjayspeaks[CW for frank discussions of body changes, including dysphoria. Also discussions of being outed, not entirely by choice (it was fine). I'll be putting these updates fully under cuts, as they are less general interest on the topic of gender/transness and more "what do I personally have going on with my bits these days." Niche interest and all that.]
HEYO! One year anniversary! Baked myself a blue(berry) cake and everything.
Big! Things! To report!
Face
Well, I might not be able to see the difference, but apparently random strangers can. Over Memorial Day weekend, my succulent club had its annual show and sale. I work as a cashier both days. It was the singular best gender experience I’ve had in my life.
Last year’s sale had already had a moment of trans significance. I was only two weeks away from starting T at that point. I wore a tshirt with a botanical print button-up shirt half open over it. I have the same mohawk-style haircut that I do now. And I had a moment of catching sight of myself in a window and being joyfully startled by how masculine I looked to myself.
Fast forward a year. I’m wearing a binder (which is helpful but not a miracle worker, let’s be real), but still dressed in a tshirt with a flannel over it. And while the people in the club who already know me continue to assume I’m a woman (with one notable exception that I’ll get to), the viewing public do not. I got he/him and sir more often than not, if someone addressed or referred to me for any reason.
And no one--not ONE--did the whole “oh, sorry, I mean ma’am” thing once they either saw me from the front or heard me talk.
I had a long, elaborate conversation with an older man who wanted to ask me questions about some of the plants he was looking at in the show. He talked to me as a guy, said I was young enough to be his son when discussing changes during his lifetime and mine, and referred to me as he when telling someone else that we had been talking. It was just one of an assortment of interactions like that, but it was by far the longest running.
I wonder what he thought of me, other than “guy.” I wasn’t exactly holding back on my eccentricities of speech and manner. I wasn’t “trying” to pass, as it were. He enjoyed talking to me, though.
One club member heard him referring to me as he. The next day, she asked me what my pronouns actually are. Of people in the club, she’s at the top of the list of people I think would be cool with trans people, so I only panicked a little. But I though, fuck it, what’s the worst that can happen in this case? So I told her I do, in fact, use he/him. I said I’m not exactly out to the general world, but yeah, that’s what I am.
I also said I don’t really stress about what people assume I am, because if I did, I’d never do anything else. This is, of course, a grandiose lie--I stress constantly over what people assume I am. But in a way, I guess it was also true that weekend. I didn’t correct what anyone used for me. If they heard other people referring to me another way, I let their confusion lie. It’s a lot easier to let misgendering roll off me when the instances of being correctly gendered outpace them so much.
All of which is a lot more than just my face, but it still feels like people are looking at my face and seeing ME for the first time.
Voice
As mentioned above, I seem to have dropped low enough that even being flamboyant and excited isn’t enough to make people think I’m a woman.
Body Hair
Bear-ification continues apace.
Chest
244 days away from surgery. *deep breath* Okay. I can do this.
Junk
Libido has bounced back a little, though it’s still competing with the existential exhaustion from everything else.
For lack of a more suitable place to put this:
The pharmacy and/or insurance have conspired to fuck with me. Even though they’re still filling my prescriptions for testosterone and for the big needles for drawing it up, they had stopped filling the one for the syringes and needles for injecting.
I talked to the clinic and they tried to sort it out. The result of which was that the pharmacy gave me two, instead of four, and still charged me the same amount.
This is made all the more infuriating by the fact that my insurance plan doesn’t cover these supplies anyway, and the clinic technically prescribes me a six-month supply at a time. So the pharmacy is just restricting my access for funsies.
(In fairness, there may have been a shortage. But were that the case, it would be nice to be told so. Because then, I could pursue supplies from another source. Instead, they frame it as “no one has said you’re allowed to have any more of these.” Which is, you know, a problem.)
This means I have been having to reuse supplies. Shoutout to The Well Project for providing instructions on cleaning injection supplies for safer reuse. Even though I’m not sharing the needles with anyone, thus not generating concerns around HIV etc, I still want to avoid bacterial infections and other complications from reusing my own stuff.
I finally had my next follow-up with the clinic and told them what had been going on. They were as baffled as I was, but they put in a fresh round of prescriptions. This, it seems, finally got through to the pharmacy. They still tried to not get the syringes ready and had to be hounded about it. They *did* fill it eventually, though, so they definitely had them available. So I’m back to ascribing to them ill-will and fuckery as motives.
Energy and Strength
I’ve got a lot of pain right now, which makes it hard to feel like my muscles are good for anything but hurting.
Mental
Obviously, the experience at the show and sale had me on cloud nine.
There’s a part of me that’s scared. Scared of what could happen if I get outed as trans when someone has read me as male. Scared of what it will be like at work to increasingly look male without coming out officially to them. Scared, basically, of the dangers of being (visibly) trans in the world.
And still, my only regret is that I didn’t get to do this years ago. It’s still the best thing I’ve ever let myself have. Maybe the only real kindness I’ve ever shown myself. All the things that still bother me are issues of wanting more, wanting to go farther, wanting to hide less. And the things that scare me, which are Other People’s Problems, aren’t enough to push me back into the closet. If I were killed tomorrow, I would still say it was worth it. Because I got a year of not being a stranger in my own skin.
HEYO! One year anniversary! Baked myself a blue(berry) cake and everything.
Big! Things! To report!
Face
Well, I might not be able to see the difference, but apparently random strangers can. Over Memorial Day weekend, my succulent club had its annual show and sale. I work as a cashier both days. It was the singular best gender experience I’ve had in my life.
Last year’s sale had already had a moment of trans significance. I was only two weeks away from starting T at that point. I wore a tshirt with a botanical print button-up shirt half open over it. I have the same mohawk-style haircut that I do now. And I had a moment of catching sight of myself in a window and being joyfully startled by how masculine I looked to myself.
Fast forward a year. I’m wearing a binder (which is helpful but not a miracle worker, let’s be real), but still dressed in a tshirt with a flannel over it. And while the people in the club who already know me continue to assume I’m a woman (with one notable exception that I’ll get to), the viewing public do not. I got he/him and sir more often than not, if someone addressed or referred to me for any reason.
And no one--not ONE--did the whole “oh, sorry, I mean ma’am” thing once they either saw me from the front or heard me talk.
I had a long, elaborate conversation with an older man who wanted to ask me questions about some of the plants he was looking at in the show. He talked to me as a guy, said I was young enough to be his son when discussing changes during his lifetime and mine, and referred to me as he when telling someone else that we had been talking. It was just one of an assortment of interactions like that, but it was by far the longest running.
I wonder what he thought of me, other than “guy.” I wasn’t exactly holding back on my eccentricities of speech and manner. I wasn’t “trying” to pass, as it were. He enjoyed talking to me, though.
One club member heard him referring to me as he. The next day, she asked me what my pronouns actually are. Of people in the club, she’s at the top of the list of people I think would be cool with trans people, so I only panicked a little. But I though, fuck it, what’s the worst that can happen in this case? So I told her I do, in fact, use he/him. I said I’m not exactly out to the general world, but yeah, that’s what I am.
I also said I don’t really stress about what people assume I am, because if I did, I’d never do anything else. This is, of course, a grandiose lie--I stress constantly over what people assume I am. But in a way, I guess it was also true that weekend. I didn’t correct what anyone used for me. If they heard other people referring to me another way, I let their confusion lie. It’s a lot easier to let misgendering roll off me when the instances of being correctly gendered outpace them so much.
All of which is a lot more than just my face, but it still feels like people are looking at my face and seeing ME for the first time.
Voice
As mentioned above, I seem to have dropped low enough that even being flamboyant and excited isn’t enough to make people think I’m a woman.
Body Hair
Bear-ification continues apace.
Chest
244 days away from surgery. *deep breath* Okay. I can do this.
Junk
Libido has bounced back a little, though it’s still competing with the existential exhaustion from everything else.
For lack of a more suitable place to put this:
The pharmacy and/or insurance have conspired to fuck with me. Even though they’re still filling my prescriptions for testosterone and for the big needles for drawing it up, they had stopped filling the one for the syringes and needles for injecting.
I talked to the clinic and they tried to sort it out. The result of which was that the pharmacy gave me two, instead of four, and still charged me the same amount.
This is made all the more infuriating by the fact that my insurance plan doesn’t cover these supplies anyway, and the clinic technically prescribes me a six-month supply at a time. So the pharmacy is just restricting my access for funsies.
(In fairness, there may have been a shortage. But were that the case, it would be nice to be told so. Because then, I could pursue supplies from another source. Instead, they frame it as “no one has said you’re allowed to have any more of these.” Which is, you know, a problem.)
This means I have been having to reuse supplies. Shoutout to The Well Project for providing instructions on cleaning injection supplies for safer reuse. Even though I’m not sharing the needles with anyone, thus not generating concerns around HIV etc, I still want to avoid bacterial infections and other complications from reusing my own stuff.
I finally had my next follow-up with the clinic and told them what had been going on. They were as baffled as I was, but they put in a fresh round of prescriptions. This, it seems, finally got through to the pharmacy. They still tried to not get the syringes ready and had to be hounded about it. They *did* fill it eventually, though, so they definitely had them available. So I’m back to ascribing to them ill-will and fuckery as motives.
Energy and Strength
I’ve got a lot of pain right now, which makes it hard to feel like my muscles are good for anything but hurting.
Mental
Obviously, the experience at the show and sale had me on cloud nine.
There’s a part of me that’s scared. Scared of what could happen if I get outed as trans when someone has read me as male. Scared of what it will be like at work to increasingly look male without coming out officially to them. Scared, basically, of the dangers of being (visibly) trans in the world.
And still, my only regret is that I didn’t get to do this years ago. It’s still the best thing I’ve ever let myself have. Maybe the only real kindness I’ve ever shown myself. All the things that still bother me are issues of wanting more, wanting to go farther, wanting to hide less. And the things that scare me, which are Other People’s Problems, aren’t enough to push me back into the closet. If I were killed tomorrow, I would still say it was worth it. Because I got a year of not being a stranger in my own skin.
